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Disclosure: I received this title for free for review in advance of publication. Title for my review: Author channels Nietzsche using the voices of Jack Kerouac and Robert Kroese At the end of this book, all I could say to myself is "M...

I love the authenticity of characters' experiences & feelings I have enjoyed how Eliot's books authentically incorporate various elements of real life within his fiction. In his first books, I think he quite accurately reflected many a...

Swell ending Eliot wraps up the third book with plenty of tension & good writing. I couldn't keep away from it and read it in about 30 clock hours (with off and on reading). He's been well schooled by his research (thanks, Brad) on wha...

Still fun, but... Book two, read in the day following reading book one. It's still accurately describing the startup world, but now emphasizing the crime / whodunnit. That's ok, but it's worth noting in my review. Two slight exasperat...

All an average person is looking for on the topic The author itemizes the various challenges associated with humans inhabiting mars, and the best thinking (to date) on how we'll be able to tackle them. There is some attention paid to th...

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startups

Starting small, building huge

This week marks ten years since I incorporated Acquia, the company that I count as the highest positive-impact business I’ve built. Yet, it wasn’t some incredible strategic, execution, or product skill on my part that made it happen; it is - of course - due to the people involved.

I often suggest to other founders that they thoughtfully identify the key things they need to do to reduce risk / create value in their companies, and put extra focus on those.

I was recently invited by Sal Daher to be interviewed for his Angel Invest Boston podcast series. Sal's series invites various tech angel investors from around the city and asks them a variety of questions about their own background, how their background influences their investment, and about things they commonly see in, and suggest to startup founders.

I am pleased the resulting podcast turned out well. Listen here, or on Sal's website. The entire series is also available on iTunes and Google Play (though it doesn't launch on those services until 10 May.)

I love what the team at Krash is doing. They're building a nice new version of cohousing. Previously seen mostly in immediate-post-college, counterculture, and artist communities, Krash is targeting a new customer: founders / employees at (primarily infotech) startups.

The Krash facility is typically a place that can house a couple of dozen short-to-medium turm renters or more, with 2-3 single beds / room (including linen & cleaning service), multiple common kitchens, common living areas, and all the tech goodies that tech startup people need, from fast network to IdeaPaint walls and ping

In a recent blog post, Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures (again) added sanity into the discussions about why zero-revenue companies can receive valuations of many billions of dollars.

I agree with everything he said. There's one more point I'd add: Large scale audiences have a valuation-per-engaged-user.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all started out as zero-revenue companies. But after they achieved the scale and level of ongoing user-engagement that they have today, the smart management teams started inserting various ways to monetize the engaged users.

I've recently been struck by the the office locations at which I've found Boston area startups taking root. And a pattern emerged for me: the center of gravity is along the MBTA Red Line. And there are so many companies it now significantly outweighs the historically-named "128 Corridor."

This shift in the Boston tech scene is so significant that I think we (the Boston tech community) should name this new corridor, and start using the name to bring attention to it. The mere act of doing so can accelerate the reality of it.